Thinking on the Blue Roads

About Me

Don't look for me much on the big news sites, I skim through them, but rarely find much that is worth commenting on. As a young son once said "We don't watch TV news, dad won't let us watch violence programs." I still don't.
Interests are religion, marketing theory (that is not an oxymoron,) Advertizing, digital photography, APOD, and historically, rocket science.
e-mail: jcarlinbl@gmail.com
The literary version is found at Thinking On the Blue Roads
The raw data for which can be found on The Blue Roads of Thinking.

Followers

Saturday, November 25, 2017

The biggest reason I support UBI (Universal Basic Income) has nothing
to do with our possible automated future, as labor becomes less
essential, or at least as we need much less of it, though that's a
great reason to support it. It's not even about eliminating poverty or
making the unemployment rate a non-issue, though those are very good
reasons too.

The reason I want a UBI is to make work at least -technically-
optional. I want this because so long as work is not optional, so long
as it is mandatory, it is coercive. I want UBI so that every low wage
worker whose boss screws them on hours, who reprimands them for taking
sick days, who asks them to work too fast in unsafe conditions (see the
current fast-food lawsuit), every young employee whose boss secretly
grabs their ass while no one is looking, who's constantly making lewd
comments, or racist comments, or any other sort of hateful bullshit...
So that every employee who finds themselves trapped in the fiefdom of
some petty little tyrant of a boss, which is actually The Majority Of
Low End Workers, so that they can say:

"TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT"

So that they can really, truly, meaningfully walk the fuck away. And
not have it mean they end up on the streets or their kids starve or they
find themselves turning tricks to keep the water running and the
lights on. Or for that matter just ending up in yet another job with a
slightly different petty tyrant. And they can do this, deal with
this, without having to deal with lawyers or Union Reps, who though are
better than -not- having them it'd be nicer to just be able to do it
ourselves. Because if -enough- of them (us) say 'NO' to this petty
fucking bullshit, then firms will be forced to stop letting the petty
bullshit happen (those who fail to will simply not get workers), and
work in general will end up less awful for everyone.

Because the ability to say 'NO' to someone who's actively abusing
you... that should be pretty high on the list of 'Liberties' worth
defending. In my mind.

Almost as important is what a mentor at Pan Am called "Fuck You Money" that puts you in a position to as he put it "To do your job right." If you are dependent on your job for your day to day lifestyle, you can't afford to disagree meaningfully with your bosses to do what is right instead of what is expedient. UBI gives you the safety net along with your Fuck You money you saved from your productive work to get the next job to use your skills properly. The economic argument for a UBI is that it is "outside" money to low income people who spend locally for necessities provided by mainly other low income people. The bodega proprietor, (there would be food trucks on every corner) and other neighborhood business would thrive and economic benefits would trickle UP to landlords, food truck lessors, food truck builders, etc. They might even buy a solar food truck with a Powerwall 2 from Tesla if they are really successful. Entry level jobs and indeed all jobs would be supplemental to UBI and under conventional income tax theory would be taxed progressively. The big difference would be that entry level jobs would be optional so wages and working conditions must be attractive enough that people would want to work. Most people would rather be productive, whether as an artisan, an entrepeneur, or as a service worker as long as they feel that they are being useful to their community but they won't do it without reasonable compensation with the UBI as a backup. Creativity is a fundamental drive for humans once they get beyond subsistence. Cave people drew on the walls of the cave, ordinary pots and pans became works of art in ancient and indigenous cultures. The
key to success for an artisan or an entrepreneur is being able to fail
without consequences to one's family. A trust fund is the traditional
back up for them, but that limits the pool of creative and risk taking
to rich people. Imagine the creative surge if anyone with a dream could
pursue it. While there are many couch potatoes passively consuming entertainment, due to the economic fact that they can afford nothing else, how many would be freed up for more creative expressions if most of their life was not spent dealing with subsistence needs.
People work. Even if it is only knitting at a boring meeting, and some of it will rise to saleable art. Unpaid
volunteer workers now could choose to be idle but work anyway. Also most people I know in the class of comfortable retired people are still working hard at something paid or otherwise. Why would that not become a way of life for those with no saleable skills? Some people living on UBI might need TLC, companionship, shopping, and other services not covered by UBI that neighbors not forced to work long hours could easily supply. Note the win-win here, volunteer caregivers might well need some of that TLC and companionship as well. The
few couch potatoes living off the stipend are probably just as well off
the streets and not making trouble to survive. They still are consumers. They eat, buy couches, TVs, and pay rent.
If we make the "idle" comfortable enough to live a decent, if not
easy, life what they do with their life is of no consequence to society. Optional work made possible by UBI for
supplemental income (taxed) is chosen in a competitive market where
skills are rewarded. People will work at something meaningful to them whether it is
needlework, carving, artisans of all kinds, even coders and inventors.
If the work is saleable they get extra income to support the local
economy and the Government. If not they can try harder or learn to do
something else. Those who want to work will have plenty of opportunities under UBI. There are many jobs that require human input. But a job, which is working for someone else will be only one option, and an option at that. Employers will have to compete on working conditions as well as pay to attract those who wish to work. If a restaurant owner or retailer needs people, hesh will have to make the job more attractive than opening a lunchroom or storefront shop.

Job availability will exceed demand, given the "Be your own boss" drive most people have. If a tradesperson with a truck can supplement UBI working for herm neighbors the job premium would have to be very attractive to drag herm across town instead.

Economically any income above UBI is disposable income. People normally spend disposable income locally in the less affluent segment of the society. So both UBI which typically will be spent in its entirety locally and any supplemental income will have a large economic multiplier for the community which will generate more marginal jobs and disposable income. --------------------------- More on http://jcarlinsv.blogspot.com/2016/04/collection-post-for-basic-income-and.html

Friday, November 24, 2017

GDP is ultimately people buying goods and services from other people. Somebody has to flip those burgers the basic income recipients are buying.

Since low income people spend locally and buy from people they know (not robots) the income from outside the local economy stays in the local economy and all are better off. The multiplier effect of the basic income dollar for a relatively closed local economy without box stores or Franchises to siphon off money is nearly 3 times. The burger flipper in a local lunchroom is paid a competitive if relatively low wage in addition to the basic income or hesh wouldn't work. Hesh spends most of herm income including UBI on local goods and services employing other local workers, creating more local demand for those goods and services and more workers to produce and vend them.

Assuming UBI and Medicare for All, now dead ex-urban and rural suburbs will become vibrant villages of local commerce and art most of which will generate excess funds for local amenities. UBI is an external source of resources for the community which will be subject to the economic multiplier by those providing services to the UBI recipients. Dispersal would solve the "BMR" housing issue as only those needing to be close to cities would compete for high end suburbs and high density city housing. Note that minimum wage jobs in high density areas would no longer be attractive to distant UBI recipients. There are many things they could do with the costs in time and money of a multi-hour commute. UBI
should be an EFT deposit into a local bank or credit union. National
Banks should not be permitted to accept UBI transfers. Local banks and
credit unions could invest in housing and business loans for residents
of the local area. Large metro areas could be divided into historical and/or ethnic communities for the purpose of defining "Local" for this restriction. The car based infrastructure will once again become a valuable resource for infrequent visits to friends and relatives and occasional visits to urban centers for shopping and entertainment. The car will remain as the personal status symbol for rich and poor alike. Although it will be autonomous and electric it will still use the roads and freeways unclogged by commuter traffic. That racing striped Camaro shell will be on a Spark chassis, but hesh will be as devoted to it as before with the big Hemi.

Some basic income recipients will use their time to pursue a dream of artisan goods production; a local service like a band, restaurant, or performance venue; or a mercantile service. Some will succeed and become tourist magnets generating outside dollars for the community.

Assuming an income tax the multiplier will be reduced a bit from a pure subsistence economy, but if the tax rate is progressive the reduction in the multiplier should be minimal for in community services as these services will be provided on narrow margins as the providers will be recipients of UBI as well.

If you cannot evaluate art without evaluating the artist you don't understand art. I specifically avoid, indeed shun, biographical data about artists. If their art is expiation for their monstrous private lives perhaps it is expiation for the monstrous private lives of all of us. Their art is their legacy. Their private lives should be buried with them and never discussed while they are alive.

An artist and herm art are two entirely
separate and distinct entities in all cultures. The art may live and be
meaningful long after the artist has returned to dust. While it is fun
to argue about which composers of famous religious music were
atheists, the fact remains that the music they composed is sung and
revered by believers in any culture affected by the religion depicted in
the composition.

A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to
judge the work of creative men. There is a logic in this; he is unbiased
- he hates all creative people equally. Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, Robert A Heinlein, 1973.

The easiest thing a lazy critic can focus on is some private life peccadillo (or worse) to avoid entirely herm work as a critic of evaluating the art to help the rest of us sort out the good from the bad.

The current trend even extends to Jefferson's "all men are created equal" as written by a slave holder who even had children by a favored slave. He had no choice in his culture. That
he could transcend his culture to create a better world where all are
equal (even though we are not there yet after 200+ years) speaks volumes
about his character not to mention the character of his critics.

Friday, November 3, 2017

Random with sophisticated feedback can produce quite meaningful
results. Think random error in gene duplication with the feedback of
selection and one gets a meaningful result of a new successful species,
or a meaningful result of a lethal mutation. Cause and
effect have very little to do with mind/brain function. Essentially the
sensory stimulus is random or at least so voluminous that the first cut
by the mind can be thought of as eliminating data points that do not
conform to an existing pattern in the nerve cells feeding data to the
brain, in other words eliminating worthless random stimuli. Apparently
the first cut in the retina is an edge. The first feedback loop is that
an edge might be useful and the brain 'requests' data from around the
edge. If the data around the edge form the capital 'I' the mind says
'Pay attention this is critical data!' Another feedback loop may say
forget it it is just a bridge girder, and the mind moves on, and the
cause bridge girder resembling an 'I' has no lasting effect. The
important functions of the brain/mind are these feedback loops that
correlate fresh input with existing data to reinforce or weaken the data
points. Trying to identify cause and effect is an endless chase
through the feedback loops unless one reasonably shortstops the process
as the mind does and says this stimulus reproducibly is associated with
this response and is a cause and effect relationship.

Random is not an either/or condition.
In fact rationality might be defined as reasonable responses to random
events that occur both internally to the brain and externally as in
spilled cumin in the curry. (Should I eat it or spit it out?) The brain
has sophisticated feedback that evaluates odd inputs either internal or
external to see if it is important to current events in the mind. Many millions of
years of separating out dangerous random signals from similar random
signals that are normal patterns in the environment make dealing with
the randomness of the environment a critical survival trait.The
brain's internal random juxtapositions of thought patterns is the
essence of human creativity and free will. A vaguely remembered dream
of a snake biting its tail juxtaposed to a vexing structural chemical
problem may be responsible for modern organic chemistry. One can play
the determinism game all night long and say August Kekulé had the dream
because of a logical train of subconscious thought on his problem, but
the waking correlation of the dream to the problem at hand seems to be
deterministically improbable to the point of ridiculousness. The mind
might be envisioned as random thought processes that
reinforce to produce meaningful and useful concepts that can be used to manage one's gestalt of self and manage one's living purposefully. Thought processes that do not fit into that matrix are either rejected outright or if deemed to be possibly significant by the mind are relegated to the memory for future use as needed, (don't
ask me how the mind knows they are useful I am not that smart.) But I do know that the mind is
extremely versatile in processing that endless stream of data. In the western world any activity that takes one out of the mainstream of living, a walk in the woods, creating a poem, or a haiku, artistic activities, thoughtful writing, etc. all have the effect of freeing the mind from managing a purposeful life. Free will is simply sampling those thought processes that do not immediately fit into the matrix, figuring out why they seemed to be important and see if somehow they can modify the matrix to make it more robust and/or useful. This is the purpose of meditative techniques that take one out of the life that the matrix controls, in effect setting it aside and trying to construct an alternative from the stored data. The Buddhists have this process as a main focus of their religion and by focusing on an essentially meaningless existence temporarily let all these meaningful and useful concepts jumble around to see if a more useful gestalt can be constructed.

The downside of this feedback is that the current events in the mind
can be conditioned to reject odd inputs that contradict certain thought
patterns that may control behavior. This conditioning is started by caregivers in children to enable them to behave correctly in their principle social milieu. "All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten" Robert Fulghum. As kindergartens are embedded in the society of the child's parents it merely continues the conditioning started by the parents. This early conditioning is almost impossible to ignore, but fortunately human teens and young adults are open to other social structures and tend to question their early conditioning and some can pick and choose which behaviors are useful and which might be modified. Much of this exploration is done through reading and visual media, which is why those with a vested interest in the childhood conditioning like churches discourage undirected reading and manage visual media for their own ends.In many social situations the conditioning becomes so strong, that random inputs that are contrary to the conditioning are rejected before they can even make into the consciousness. Both political beliefs and religious beliefs can fall into this category. I am quite comfortable with the randomness of living. I think causality is the exception rather than
the rule.
In my view free will is expressed by how we react to the random events
that color our lives including that huge one of our inevitable death.
Our lives began with the random meeting of gametes, and random events
like finding and losing friends, and lovers define how we choose to
live. I live my life intentionally, in that I choose which random events
I wish to react to and how I do so. Free will is not even an issue;
there is no compulsion to do anything I choose not to do. Although
things may happen that I must choose to react to. But there is always a
choice. When the green car came flying over the center barrier into my
lane, I could choose to do nothing and experience the fun of a high
speed head on, or I could choose to steer as close to the barrier as I
could. One might say the choice was forced, but it was still a choice.
Making good choices is the essence of living in a random world.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Monogamy is not a description of a relationship. It is a description of a reproductive strategy.

Polyamory is default for prepubescent children and non-adults and should be encouraged with the usual precautions for STDs. In societies where women breed shortly after puberty other standards apply but given modern contraception strategies for men and women polyamory should be the rule until parenting is contemplated. I am not talking hetero only here especially prepubescent and early teen sexuality. Sow your wild oats to your hearts content on any infertile ground of either gender to determine what kind of sexuality makes sense for ones settled years which may end up to be childless polyamory.

If
no children are planned monoamory may well be toxic. My generation gave
the world the conceopt of going steady as early as high school, that
is, dating only a single partner as long as the relationship lasts. The
strain this puts on relationship building is overwhelming as sexuality,
having fun on a date, and commitment to a single other who initially you
may not know well does not work well. Even more pressure is on the
relationship if pregnancy before marriage is a violation of the norm as
it was when contraception was limited to condoms. Even with reliable
contraception for women trying to combine sexuality, companionship, fun,
and mental stimulation into a single relationship seems to put too much
strain on both partners.

Most people contemplating children hetero or homo are monogamous as a tried and proven stable environment for raising children. It is not the only way. Polygamy as usually practiced one male several females seems to work in some cultures as the women share the child raising with the male as a resource provider and impregnator. Single parenting is outrageously difficult, but possible. An absent partner providing resources does help.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

(Mary Sperling) claimed her car from the robopark, guided it up the ramp and set the controls for the North Shore. The car waited for a break in the traffic, then dived into the high-speed stream and hurried north. Mary settled back for a nap….awakened by the jangle of the emergency alarm and by the speedster slowing to a stop… “All cars resume local control….” Methuselah's Children, Robert A Heinlein, (1941) or 1958.

With
autonomous or even semi-autonomous cars in 120mph+ pelotons on existing
freeways and Musk 120mph skates in tunnels in LA, whole metro areas are
sprawlsville. The American life style will not be changed to urban
living. Ford, General Motors, and all the rest will still be around in
2100 promoting sprawl.
The
car is the most important surviving public status symbol, and Americans
at least are not going to give that up. They will drive less
especially locally but providing rides between urban nodes will still be
an important status indicator. Cities, especially new cities, will
evolve out of the suburbs with high density urban nodes around regional
amenities with complete urban services, restaurants, service
establishments and high density housing at all price points for those
who choose to live and possibly work in an urban node.

The
majority of the population will still be economically and ethnically
segregated in single family homes and low density apartments in the
suburbs, exurbs and now dead rural towns. The current pattern for office commercial segregated in suburban campuses will continue for the foreseeable future.
Even working class cars will be high speed semi-autonomous and urban
nodes will still require high density autonomous parking for residents
and visitors.

Freeways
will evolve to narrower lanes restricted to autonomous vehicles, with
high speed lanes running in pelotons for efficiency and throughput.
Current freeways of three lanes or more with a breakdown lane in the
center will in the near future convert to two or more high speed lanes,
one transition lane and leave one wide lane with a breakdown lane for
non-autonomous cars at existing speed limits and entrance and exit.
Autonomous
cars will park in high density parking lots on floors limited to small
SUVs by floor spacing, served by elevators. Garages for autonomous
vehicles only will be constructed over a major intersection with an
existing freeway which is already served by transit and close to
developed commercial or urban centers. The garage may be built over the
freeway. Pedestrian and bicycle access is over the existing sidewalk space on the
cross street and transit access over a lane of the cross street. Cars
will enter from freeway access ramps to car lanes inside the garage next
to the pedestrian/bikeway.
Driverless autonomous cabs would be available at the freeway nodes for
those needing them.

See also http://jcarlinsv.blogspot.com/2017/05/autonomous-cars-and-cities.html

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

If the Jahwist had not been the Disney of her time it is likely we
wouldn't even have a Bible, or Torah. Can you imagine worshiping a book
compiled from P, E, and R if you left out J? All the good stories that are remembered from the Pentateuch are J's It is hard enough to wade through all that crap with the leavening of J. All that would be left is a soggy matzoth.If you read the Jahwist stories as a coherent wholeThe Book of Jis a good place to start, although extracting them from your favorite scripture is also a reasonable endeavor, you will find an ironic reading of the oral tradition of the Hebrew people in which the male figures especially Yahweh are generally putzes that can't do anything very well. The first Jahwist story, the famous creation story, God and Adam
stumble around being dicks while mother Eve brings wisdom in the form of
knowledge of good and evil without the intervention of any God to
humankind. This pisses off God and Adam, who was trying to push Eve
around using God's edicts as as a lever, and they blame her for discovering this
boon.

Clearly Eve was a divine creation, separate
from Adam. Eve was created in the divine image of God Herself. In
contrast, Adam evolved from primates with lower intelligence. It should
be obvious that women are innately superior to males.

The Bible shows this. The very name for 'the Lord' is Yahvah. Eve in
Hebrew is Chavah. If you look at the original Hebrew letters, they are
even more nearly identical. Each time a female is born, it is another divine creation. Males, on
the other hand, bear far too much similarity to apes of lesser
intelligence. It should be obvious.The Genesis story shows God leading the animals and beasts to Adam for a
potential mate, because Adam was just an animal. Adam almost chose a
dog for a mate. But God, in Her infinite wisdom, realized Adam was not
capable of living without divine help, so God gave a replica of Herself
to watch over Adam.This is clear from the Hebrew word, usually translated as 'help mate'
It is 'Ezer,' a word which does mean help. But in the Bible, it only
appears as a term for God Herself, or for Eve. David says, 'God is my
Help (Ezer)' Eve, the Woman, was Adam's Help (Ezer). It was Adam
who needed help, divine assistance. Eve was provided. She did not
evolve. She had a separate divine creation.Scientists generally are correct. Adam evolved. But religion is also
correct, Eve was a Divine Creation. All the violence is the world is
caused by men, who have barely evolved past their lower primate
origins. Even with divine assistance from women, they often are unable
to advance beyond their atavistic nature."

If
you read J's stories with an intelligent woman author in mind the
misogyny of the traditional oral history is clear from the ironic
retelling of the Garden story as a prime example. "The woman made me do
it." The woman is the only reasonable person in the whole tale. Both
God and Adam look like idiots. Unfortunately J's stories becme incorporated in the Pentateuch as the "Word of God" mixed up with P, E, & R and the irony and satire got lost as proof-texting was discovered by the (male) preachers and priests and the march of the Patriarchs became unstoppable. The
entire Book of Mormon is a joke perpetrated on an annoyingly pious
young man in New England by his gay, atheist friend Walt Whitman. The
Mormons suppress literary analysis like word count and stylistic and
content parallels but they cannot suppress any literate person from
comparing the Book of Mormon with Leaves of Grass on a boring few day
stay in a Salt Lake City hotel. I
read the Book of Mormon on the first night of that boring stay (no
booze, no friends) and could not miss the resemblance to a satire of the
Bible I wrote in High School. I gave myself 20 lashes with the
monster's noodly appendages for not naming my angel Moroni, but chalked
it up to a lack of literary genius. The next day I got my copy of
Leaves of Grass out of my suitcase and read it side by side with the
Book of Mormon. No brainer - same author. I would not put it past
Whitman to have given his friend "magic glasses" and told him where in
the woods to dig. I am sure Whitman kept a copy or revision of his
satire and cleaned up parts of it for his future writings. I still have
mine. It is amazing to me that the LDS even refuse to notice the satire of the name of one of their major saints but treat it as part of the Gospel they live by. The whole BoM if read without belief is a brilliant satire of Christianity. I know less about Islam than Judaism and Christianity, but the proof-texting by the Imams and other "Islamic" leaders from the Pentateuch and Muhammad is obvious to any reasonable observer. Unfortunately I do not read Arabic and therefore cannot understand the context of the proof-texting. I suspect the context is similar to Jewish and Christian scripture, and is as ironic in its character.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Back in the mid 20th Century the feminist movement tried with some
success to ban the generic use of "men" and "man" as in "All men are
created equal." In current vernacular they have succeeded quite well.
In some Churches led by UUs they even succeeded in removing male
references to God in large part by eliminating the pronoun altogether,
resulting in some rather weird hymnody with repetitive use of God and
some strangled syntax to eliminate references directly to God. I was frequently involved in God discussions at that time and found the
effort of avoiding the Pronouns for God too much effort and found the
shock of using Hesh and Herm in reference to God a useful result in my
discussions. Typically it generated the assertion that God was male and
that the proper pronouns were He and His. This generally derailed the
discussion into a useful discussion of God's testosterone levels.

One
of the first things that offended me when I found out that other people
who believed in God believed that God was The Lord (masculine) and
He/His were interchangeable with God. I was still in the scatological
humor stage at the time and gleefully referred to God as Sheheit.
Making myself unpopular in some circles, but most of my friends were at
the most religious agnostics, so I didn't catch much flack. And when I
did I would always correct myself to Hesheit. I outgrew the scatology
but still refused to even think of God as He. When I came to social media I continued the practice and for a long time
linked on the words to a discussion on the Gender and Sexuality
boards. When I began to see "hesh" and "hir" or "herm" in the popular
literature without explanation, (I admit to noticing each time) I quit
linking particularly on atheist and the UU boards as everyone could figure
out what I meant without the link from context although fundamentalist
Christians and language conservatives continue to protest its use in
reference to God. I also eliminated the gender specific pronouns from my vocabulary as a general pronoun and use "hesh" and "herm" as my pronouns of choice whether the gender of the referent is known or not. This is particularly useful in calling attention to gender specific terms like "Actor," Waitress," or "Chairman." Traditionalists be damned. They need their consciousness raised. If it jars their
reading or hearing of the term, they still need the consciousness raising.

More recently I have been using the terms when the referent is of known
gender but the gender is not relevant in context. Reference to the
author of a scientific paper was beat into my head by my then wife whose
papers in a male chauvinist academic profession were referred to as
"HER" papers as if they were therefore less important than "his" papers.
They in fact were less important than "his" papers, even though in
general they were significantly better. It is no accident that women
in science generally publish with initials only. If men are offended by having to think about gender specific nouns, too bad. They need to. Particularly the sexist males. They can be sure I intended to insult them with the gender inclusive pronoun. As for the ESL issue, some languages particularly Asian languages are
non-sexist in that the pronouns are non-specific. I live with Asians
and have become used to hearing "she" and "her" being used as a pronoun
for anybody. I don't bother to correct them as they are on my side. I
suspect Asians would have more trouble with "he" and "she" in writing
and speech than they would be with "hesh" and "herm." Other languages are inherently sexist. I was at the installation of a
new department head who couldn't even introduce his staff because his native
language didn't have a word for a female colleague. He did all right
with the men, but the female who outranked the men caused an
embarrassing for all search for an appropriate honorific.

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

I invented the gender inclusive pronouns "Hesh" and "Herm" very early in life, and discovered that they helped me think about a supernatural power in a sympathetic way that was impossible with the testosterone poisoned "He." Even trying to insert God in place of the
male pronoun every time didn't work too well. The testosterone is frequently implied by context.
By college I had learned to think of everyone as hesh rather than he or she even when it was important to tell the difference. It was the first step to radical humanism as once I began to think of people as hesh it was hard to create differences along any lines since the major pervasive division on gender
lines carried over from the patriarchal social system we inherited from God was obliterated in my mind. When you can't even think in gender terms, differentiation on other human variables is nearly impossible. Try thinking about that "other" person without gender and note what it does to your mind. For the record, I was a strictly heterosexual male as interested in the hormonal needs only satisfied by a heterosexual female as anybody else. But thinking of a woman as hesh in spite of the obvious delightful differences did change the way I related to women from the first contact in class or on the street to very intense relationships. Even my parenting partner was early on a partner with benefits rather than a sexual person. When reading scientific literature I never noticed the scientist's name, by policy, until it was necessary for reference and even then as a footnote on the back of the index card. Yep, I used them. Any gender related references were automatically changed to hesh/herm mentally and on the card. I learned a lot that way. Some highly recommended papers turned to crap when the DWM was turned into hesh. Or LM for that matter.

I have since changed policy a bit as the cutting edge scientists in my family educated me that for a woman to succeed in any meritocracy they had to be twice as good as the average male. It follows that an accepted paper by a woman has to have twice the chances of being worth reading as one by the average man. Similarly for professional choices. Even though I think of them as hesh in the interview I will give interview preference to a woman given a bunch of equivalent CVs or Resumes.

Applying the same thinking to reading and rereading fiction has been enlightening and fascinating. I mentally reassign a gender ambiguous name to the major characters and thinking of all as hesh. In the mandatory sex scenes some role reversals are needed but it is surprising how often they are not. It is amusing to think of a sex partner as trans occasionally.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Strength is a prerequisite for humanism. If you don't believe in yourself you cannot believe in others.

A humanist treats all people as
individuals with the dignity and respect they have earned as a human
being regardless of any group they may have been born into, chosen, or
indoctrinated into at some point in their lives. A humanist recognizes
that humans come with a lot of baggage some of which may not be
functional in a modern society, but a humanist recognizes that it is
what the individual has unpacked from that baggage which is important,
not the baggage itself. Many men and women from religious and social
indoctrination carry a heavy load of baggage of xenophobia, paternalism and
misogyny, but to the extent that they have or have not left some of it
behind, the humanist will accord respect for the human accordingly. A major misconception about humanism is that humanists are incapable of judging other humans and treat all humans equally. As a first assumption this should be true, but from Tom Lehrer's intro to National Brotherhood Week

I am sure we all agree we ought to love one another, and I know that there are people that do not love their fellow human beings and I hate people like that.

The real skill in humanism is using behavioral cues rather than assumptions about the baggage that the person appears to be carrying in deciding how to deal with the encounter. This is not to say that awareness of the baggage is unimportant in interpreting behavioral cues, but it is the cue properly interpreted rather than the baggage that should dictate the human response. In dealing with a member of a discriminated against class the humanist is sensitive to and tries to defuse any justified resentment, but accepts it as a reasonable reaction and tries to find human commonalities to build a humanistic relationship on. Always with the recognition that triggers exist, and can be inadvertently used. Accepting responsibility for not avoiding triggers is an important part of defusing them. As an example if I am caught holding a door for a feminist, and she objects that she can do it herself* I simply apologize for being in her way. I have stimulated conversations with more than one feminist non-acquaintance that way. A note on the current bigoted trend of "Color Blindness." A humanist celebrates the diversity of coloration, face and eye shape, and the cultural traditions associated with that diversity in the human race. Their history is our history and no group has a lock on superiority in anything. Humans are "tribal" animals and we naturally gravitate to the lore and traditions of our tribe but doing so by ignoring or denigrating the lore and traditions of the other tribes' leads only to hate and bigotry. Members of an identifiable group must also be aware of the baggage that they carry as a member of the group, even though they have done their best to unpack and discard the worst of it. As an example I am a member of the white, male, privileged, MBA, financially secure group. In other words the assholes that run the businesses that run the government and oppress the working class and the disadvantaged. I have diligently tried to avoid the social disabilities that come with the class of privileged white males.

Sexism/misogyny.

Patriarchal assumptions.

Being a winner rather than a loser.

Refusing to cooperate or collaborate as an equal.

Rejection of active parenting. That is marrying a woman to do the job and accepting the costs of child support as freedom to change my mind. Or simply fucking someone to "carry a seed" and not really caring about whether that seed grows properly or not as long as it is born.

Using material success as a measure of worth. "He* who dies with the most toys wins."

Hiring, bribing, or intimidating others to cover one's ass in all of the above.

Unpacking religious and social baggage is a difficult and frequently
impossible human task. Castigating all those who have not done so
because of their baggage is neither functional nor humanistic. Those
who have managed to unpack and leave behind some of the more
dysfunctional bags need all the respect and help from others they can
get, and not be thrown under the baggage bus. For those on the bus
education and ostracism are about the only options for a rational
humanist, but these options are generational in impact, and those
individuals on the bus that have unpacked a bit are critical to the
education role, and deserve all the dignity and respect they can find if
they manage to leave the bus even for a short holiday. As humans are tribal animals tribal religious baggage is the most difficult for a humanist to deal with. Telling Malala or any Muslim expatriate that she must lose the hijab if she is to be credible as a feminist is one of most dysfunctional tactics I have run into recently. It certainly is a powerful statement of the misogyny of Muslim men, but until you change the men, we are talking generations here; the hijab is a rational response to that misogyny. Incidentally fundamentalist Christian and Jewish men are just as misogynist, but society has made more progress in changing their behavior which is the first step in changing their thinking. It is the men who must change the men to enable the women to feel more comfortable with relaxing the dress codes. I have always selected female professionals when available when I had a choice, using the assumption that a female had to be twice as good as the average man to even have a chance in any professional role. That is based on the reality that the average man who is successful in a professional position may be far to the left on the competence curve and still be able to compete in a paternalistic society. Sorry, men, half of you are from the bottom half of your class. Even in professional schools where women face discrimination even today. Factoring in the discriminatory entrance barriers it is easy to believe that more than half the men end up in the bottom half of the class. The few women who graduate are generally near the top as they have the Mrs. to fall back on if the going is too tough. Men are always suckers for intelligent, competent women and the sex bait is difficult to resist, even if a Mrs. is the hook. Humanism is a fundamental change in internal attitude that may or may
not be accomplished in even a single lifetime. It is simply a constant struggle to avoid categorization. A personal anecdote may
be illustrative. When I have the choice I select among women medical professionals for care. Nonetheless I have always been aware of the fact that they were female, and the stray mating dance thoughts always had to be repressed. Especially if they were attractive in the gender sense. Perhaps it is simply age, but I realized after a recent routine physical that I had finally made it over the gender hurdle and the doctor was just that: a professional doing herm job competently. It wasn't that I didn't know she was female, I chose her for that reason, and it turned out that she was attractive, but after the first visit, hesh was "just" a competent doctor, and I was paying attention only to that as hesh was still in the evaluation stage of choice as a PCP. *Gender reference intentional.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Because I am a humanist. A humanist treats all people as individuals with the dignity and respect they have earned as a human being regardless of any group they may have been born into, chosen, or indoctrinated into at some point in their lives. A humanist recognizes that humans come with a lot of baggage some of which may not be functional in a modern society, but a humanist recognizes that it is what the individual has unpacked from that baggage which is important, not the baggage itself. Many men and women from religious and social indoctrination carry a heavy load of baggage of paternalism and misogyny, but to the extent that they have or have not left some of it behind, the humanist will accord respect for the human accordingly. As unpacking religious and social baggage is a difficult and frequently impossible human task, castigating all those who have not done so because of their baggage is neither functional nor humanistic. Those who have managed to unpack and leave behind some of the more dysfunctional bags need all the respect and help from others they can get, and not be thrown under the baggage bus. For those on the bus education and ostracism are about the only options for a rational humanist, but these options are generational in impact, and those individuals on the bus that have unpacked a bit are critical to the education role, and deserve all the dignity and respect they can find if they manage to leave the bus even for a short holiday. Men and women are fundamentally
different biologically, emotionally, and in the roles they play in
insuring that the next generation of humanity is an improvement over the
last which is a fundamental evolutionary drive for all sexual animals. The mating dance in most
species is clear evidence that females will refuse to mate with less
than the best male available whatever the best means to the female and
the male will invest significant time, energy and genetics in being
best. Males tend to be show-offs, brightly colored, bigger and more
aggressive (expendable) while females tend to be drab, and blend into
the scenery so they still can get the offspring to self-sufficiency even
in the absence of the territorial protection of the male. The male's
primary role in the progeny project is to provide a safe and bountiful
space for the female to nurture the young. In pre-industrial societies the division of labor between men and women was unforced, with women taking on the productive jobs that were compatible with child care, clothing provisioning, gardening, feeding the family, and housekeeping. Generally the productivity of women was an investment in the family, rather than income producing. The men, relatively more expendable after conception, took on the more time and labor intensive jobs on the periphery of the settlement that were also dangerous: Hunting, grain farming, herding, and warfare. Men also took on the local jobs that were essentially uninterruptable, smithing, building, etc. For this productivity men were paid so that they could exchange their labor for other useful items they couldn't make. Most of the pay was spent on things useful to provide the safe and bountiful space for the family. Some may have been reserved for capital improvements in his own productivity, or hiring others to boost his productivity. Industrialization had a profound effect on the economic value of the productivity of women in the home. The 18th century mills were primarily devoted to production of cloth mainly cotton which effectively eliminated the economic productivity of spinning and weaving in the home. The sewing machine and the clothing factories was the final nail in the coffin of homemade clothing as a value producing industry compatible with child raising. In the early 20th century home appliances mainly the washing machine improved the home productivity of moms to the point that homemaking, shopping, cooking and serving were the last remaining home economic activity that were compatible with raising children. Industrialization had an equally profound effect on the economic role of men. No longer could the smith compete with a home forge, he had to tend an industrial forge that was running 24/7. A wagon wright (archaic terminology intentional) no longer could produce a wagon, much less a mechanical vehicle in his shop at home; he was tied to an assembly line metaphorically catching a wheel bouncing off the floor to attach it to the axle. The wagon came on schedule and the wheel bounced on time, and the worker could not even pee until a relief showed up. This set the pattern for a man's job in any role in industry. Inflexible long hours on the job, that were well compensated as wages were relatively inconsequential compared with productivity of the enterprise. If the genetic imperative of producing a reproducing adult carrying his genes was a need for a man, the Faustian bargain of enabling a less physically demanding but more important parenting role in the absence of a functional father for their parenting partner in exchange for the long, demanding job outside the home to provide the resources for caregiving, nurturing, and socializing their children to reproductive adulthood. Management of these soul crunching enterprises reinforced some of the more antisocial characteristics of males: competitiveness, aggression, and lack of concern for their fellow humans of either gender. It has always been known that "Nice guys finish last." Not that it was necessary but science has caught up: From a SciAm Book

Research
shows that nice people are more likely to get and keep a job, but they
tend to earn less and get passed over for leadership positions more
often than their more demanding colleagues.

They earn less because nobody really wants to be an asshole, and being an asshole is a necessary attribute for a leadership position. From supply and demand theory a soulless enterprise will have to pay more to induce people to be assholes. It therefore follows that assholes make more than nice guys or nice gals. Human females fall heavily into the nice gal part of the humanism curve and it would seem reasonable for feminists to be trying to raise compensation for all in the nice people jobs. Instead feminists seem to be pushing to compete for equal access to the high paid asshole jobs. There are a few women that fall on the asshole end of the humanism curve and since they are competing with the average male asshole they generally do well in proportion to their distribution on the curve. Adequate pay for equal work in the nice guy positions primarily occupied
by moms and people of both genders with more important things to do
than being an asshole like students, artists, and care givers does not
appear on the feminist agenda. A few feminnists advocate for parental leave for both genders, but being
a parent or a potential parent is a disqualification for leadership
unless your name is Zuckerberg or you are in a comparable situation.
While the interviewer may not ask if you are sterile or a non-parent,
there are other ways of determining if your loyalty is to the
corporation rather than humanity. Note that a male active parent
carries the same disability as a mom or a potential mom. Take too much
time off to referee or even cheer a child's game or take herm to a
tournament and watch the promotion bait for a salary increase fly off
the hook. There
is a reason that moms are mostly women. As a male mom at times I can
attest that raising children to be productive and responsibly
reproductive humans demands a lot of time, energy and emotional
investment in those children. From oxytocin, to breast feeding natural
forces have generated a strong emotional bond between women and their
children. The nurturing investment in the gene pool is natural for
women as they know for sure that the genes of the children are at least
half hers given modern biology knowledge and instinctively for
biologically naive women. The medical revolution which reduced maternal and infant mortality to insignificance and relatively reliable conception planning which became possible in the early 20th century had a profound effect on the last remaining home activity: child raising. When one conception could be reliably considered to be one reproductive adult, and women could reliably control their own fecundity without the consent of any man, a family size of 2 to 4 children became optimal socially, further freeing up women from the ties to the home. Nonetheless, the demands of proper parenting of even a few children limit the kinds of work outside the home that women can consider even after the last child is in (pre) school when the father is in the socially traditional and absent provisioning role or as unfortunately all too common absent in any role. The soulless corporate enterprise managed by assholes insures that most of these jobs that allow time for parenting are minimum wage or less (see tipped servers) and are generally held by moms either voluntarily or of necessity. Just another reality for most women that is ignored by feminists and one of the major reasons I object to the label. Believe me: the men and women fighting to raise the minimum wage do not call themselves feminists. A major waste of time and effort by feminists is trying to change the nature of the mating
dance of humans as sexual animals. Normal male attention getting behavior: What used to be called chivalry; commenting on the attractiveness of a female; offering trinkets, food and drink; displays of their male prowess to strange women; even quiet appreciation of the attractiveness of a woman are all condemned by feminists as treating women as sexual objects. In other words they are trying to change the mammalian male view of the female of the species. Men may come to appreciate other attractive attributes but the first thing a dry prick looks at are the secondary sex attributes. They don't even need to be conventionally attractive but they have to be female. Everything that feminism has done since it became a movement in the
last half of the 20th century has at best hindered women in fully participating as sexual humans in society. Changing the language to pretend that male dominance does not exist. Male dominance is a historical artifact of the dependence of reproducing women in many cultures, and in an industrial society. Demanding access to asshole positions and the pay that goes along with them. And suggesting that moms working or stay at home are an affront to feminism. Finally and probably the most important reason I am not a feminist is that almost all feminists of all genders discourage successful women from contributing to the
human gene pool whether they choose to become stay at home moms, or continue to be successful in
contributing economically in the society while parenting. The mommy wars are not over. A proper feminist of either gender is childless, usually permanently so, in order to avoid the parenting penalty inherent in any job.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Paul is the reason I am not a Christian. God is the reason I am an atheist. Jesus is the reason I and many nominal Christians are Jesuists.

Paul is dead, but seriously… just this morning I was trying to come up with a term that would encapsulate my atheistic attitude toward Christianity (within which religion I was loosely raised) and permit my admiration for Jesus himself. I thought I might have coined the name "Jesuist" and Googled it…

Anonymous on https://jcarlinsv.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-jesuist.html

Jesuism in the West is an atheistic worldview based on the teachings of Jesus as documented in the Gospels including the recently discovered Gnostic Gospels of Thomas and Judas. A Jesuist rejects the supernatural accretions to the stories about Jesus as mnemonic and marketing devices typical of the age, and rejects all theistic references including self-references by Jesus as metaphorical devices to communicate with the prevailing Jewish and Pagan religions. To understand Jesuism one must understand the concept of radical respect for all people taught by Jesus in the Beatitudes, the Good Samaritan, the Adulteress, and indeed in all the stories involving Jesus directly. While Jesus believed in the eventual judgment by his God to help formulate and sell the radical concept that all people are to be accepted as brothers and sisters, the Jesuist will accept this as part of the religious culture Jesus dedicated his life to changing. Jesus was a Jew who believed in the Abrahamic God concept, but his rebellion was as much against his own God as the religion of the Jews he was immersed in.

The Jefferson Bibleis a useful condensation of the traditional teachings of Jesus and could be considered the Holy Book of the Jesuist. Thomas Jefferson winnowed out the story and teachings of Jesus the man for us in The Jefferson Bible. He littered the floor of the President's office with trash from the bible created by Paul and others, until he had distilled the essence of Jesus from the rest of the bible. I claim Jefferson as the first Jesuist, he certainly was an atheist, (politically a Deist.) The Jefferson Bible is a concise and readable way to discover the ministry of Jesus. Part of the traditional Unitarian “Affirmation”

could be its doxology. Jesuism is really designed for Christians who, having lost faith in Paul's Christ have moved back to the Gospels for meaning and morality. Once they get comfortable without a savior many of them find they don't need God either. Particularly the God of the OT and Paul who was more worried about idol worship than people treating each other right. They can salvage most of their 'Jesus loves me' conditioning with Jesus as exemplar rather than God, and even worship in their same church. You will hear them talking about Jesus ministering to the poor, the prostitutes, the gays, the fishermen, and other common people. You will also hear them focusing their religion down to the Second Great Commandment:

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself

with the gloss of Matt 25:40

As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

It is the teaching of radical respect for all people which separates Jesus from all of the religious teachers of his time. Until Jesus, religion was all about us vs them, 'We are the world's sweet chosen few, the rest of you be damned.' After Jesus it was more of the same. Fortunately, Paul hijacked his charisma and caused the preservation of the synoptics to document it, incidentally preserving the message of radical respect to be rediscovered by those who can relate to it. There are theistic Jesuists. Some might call them Synoptic Christians since for them the NT stops before John. But they believe Jesus is the Son of God by the Holy Spirit, who was sent to earth to teach the humanist message of Love your neighbors, all of them, even the Samaritans, respect the poor, the meek, the thieves, the whores and even the people who hate you. In short how to live this life. Many of them take the next step and don't worry about an afterlife believing that how they live this life is all that matters to God. There is little of Christ in their beliefs but they call themselves Christians for traditional reasons, as many of them are found in traditional Christian Churches. Some call themselves Progressive Christians; I would call them theist Jesuists. The Humanist Teachings of Jesus It is clear to me that this historical person was a human that lived and died in the usual human fashion. He believed in God, but was not one himself. He was the earliest documented humanist, and I think all humanists, theistic and atheistic are indebted to him. 37...Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.38This is the first and great commandment.39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.Matthew 22:37-40 (King James Version) In particular when the neighbor explicitly referred to was a member of a hated group that had just caused Jesus to 'shake the dust off his sandals' for one of the most serious breaches imaginable of the social contract of the time. In a desert community refusing hospitality was probably comparable to refusing to help an injured man by the side of the road. The chances were good that one refused a drink of water, could dehydrate before getting to the next stopping place. But he was not telling us to love just the nice neighbors, but all of them. This of course does not mean approving of everything they do, but that violations of the social contract must be dealt with love rather than hate. With the gloss of Matt 25:40"As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." the explicit humanism of Jesus becomes quite clear. I find Jesus to be quite human, quite humanistic, and radically respectful of all people. No wonder they killed him. Cynic and Pharisaic teachings were an important component of the message of Jesus but it was his synthesis of the important ideas of both, and certainly his showmanship in presenting the synthesis that made his message so important for its time. The fact that there are still many people trying to emulate his teachings no matter how corrupted, although some are going back to the gospels only, that makes Jesus so important in western religions.

A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism. All people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily help one another.Wiscidea

The Historical Jesus Jesus as a normal 30+ male of his time probably had a female companion who was with him during his ministry. Illiterate as nearly all women of the time she created an adoring oral history embellished as all oral histories are for mnemonic as well as story telling reasons. She probably helped him hone his message, I see a lot of anti-misogyny in it, at least in the context of the time. No man thought up the tale of the unstoned whore. As I understand the 'Q document' its very existence as a 'document' is an inference. I find it much more likely that Q was a companion of Jesus for much or all of his ministry, had a good memory for what he said at the various gatherings and related those to the disciples along with other lore that may have been less important to the disciples in their cult building. Hesh probably was what would be termed today a groupie, probably was not literate, as it is unlikely that hesh had any relationship with the priesthood. The reason I am using the gender inclusive pronoun is that I find it probable that Q was female." And yes, I think of "Q" as Mary Magdalene. Also I think Mary was much more important to the ministry of Jesus than the men who wrote the histories would even think of giving her credit for. I suspect that social conversations between the two were instrumental in developing Jesus' overall gospel of respect and love for ones neighbor. In any event the story if you will or oral history which was probably the case in that illiterate culture was probably originated by a companion of Jesus in his travels. This oral history was picked up by the disciples who as tradespeople of the time were probably also illiterate. At some point literate followers of the cults generated by Jesus were induced to write down the various oral histories, three of which were canonized along with John's commentary. The rest were destroyed, lost, or in the case of the Gnostics buried for posterity. I have no problem extrapolating the Synoptics back to the original oral history and stripping the mnemonics and worship to get to the radical theistic humanism of Jesus. What I get from the story is a humanistic and anti-religious message. Radical for its time and place. Certainly God is there but it is a personal not a male religious God. I find a strong feminine influence on the message. Admittedly a lot of soup from one oyster, but when the oyster is strongly and uniquely flavored, it may not be a useless soup. Even for an atheist. The existence of a cult whose names and characters have been preserved in the stories argues strongly for the existence for a leader for that cult. People do not generally risk reputation and possibly their lives for a cobbled together philosophy or religion. Also crowds generally do not gather for panel discussions of religion or anything else. The cult had a spokesperson, Ockham's beloved razor says the spokesperson was Jesus and that he assembled and preached the stories that form the basis of his ministry. The other very strong argument is that a contemporary religious charlatan needed a God like man as a marketing tool to be the savior for his followers who he had convinced were sinners in need of a savior. This charlatan hijacked the charisma and one of the miracles associated with Jesus as the basis for his savior Jesus, now Christ Jesus. The fact that his followers accepted the transfer of the charisma from Jesus to the Christ argues strongly that a popular preacher existed within their lifetimes who could believably be thought of as the Christ. If you strip the obvious miracles, especially the resurrection, which Christians cannot do of course without destroying their faith, you find a charismatic itinerant preacher, who integrated a consistent message of radical humanism and independence from the god mediators, priests, and shamans. It was a theistic culture so it is not surprising that he would believe in God. The core of his message was to develop a personal relationship with God directly, no priests necessary or even desirable, and treat all humans as neighbors to be respected, aided when necessary even at considerable cost to yourself, and loved as one loves oneself.... Cults are not started by committees, which for me argues strongly that there was a historical person that was the basis for the Jesus cult for which there is some historical evidence, Paul's Christian Cult. for which there is ample historical support, the Gnostic cults, for which historical documentation has recently been discovered, and other cults rumored but for which no documentation exists. But again, God was the dominant social paradigm at the time atheists and secularists really were non-existent. Even a personal God independent of any religion was radically humanist for the time. I see no religious establishment in the sayings of Jesus. He was in all sayings directly attributed to him giving religion back to the people. Jesus was using the prevailing paradigm of God to teach, but the focus was on being a better human being to and for other humans. In other words you learn from God how to be a better human. I am not talking about The Lord Jesus of Nazareth I am talking about the human preacher Jesus, who was using God to teach his fellow humans humanity. I suspect he believed in his personal relationship to God and believed that his mission from God was to teach what he taught. Certainly the radical theistic humanism of Jesus in the Synoptics before the passion has much to teach Christians and atheists alike. It is true some of the idealism is over the top, but none the less effective as an ideal if not a practical paradigm for living. In some payoff scenarios turn the other cheek seems to be an extremely effective strategy in game theory known as tit-for two tats. Opponent defects once, cooperate. If opponent defects twice retaliate. Practically: If hesh smites the other cheek, kill herm. There is a good reason that much of modern Christianity, the 'Progressive Christians' have for the most part reduced the entire law and the prophets, that is the whole Bible, to this teaching of Jesus. An atheist can learn simply by studying this and its context. "Love thy neighbor As thyself." In those days as now religion made a good living selling self-hate. Jesus is clearly stating that all humans are worthy of self-respect. You can't get much more humanist than that. Theistic humanist? Of course theism was the language of the time." I find the evidence for the existence of Jesus, the itinerant preacher and entertainer, persuasive. He would be a great televangelist today and as then he would refute all the Pauline garbage preached by the followers of his competitor in the religious leader industry." What would Jesus do? If he were alive today would he have a television ministry based in a megachurch in Marin County? It sure wouldn't be in LaLa Land. Would he be regaling against the preachers of hate for your neighbors of the wrong religion, color, or sexual preference? Would he be successful? Footnote: the (2011) Wiki article of the same name was simply a ripoff of the name to simplify Jesusism which is what his article is about.